A Tale of Two Americas: Marina's Bicultural Experiences and Exploration of Bitcoin - 1

Tali: 00:00:00

Hi everyone.

Tali: 00:00:01

Welcome to Orange Hatter.

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Today you'll be listening to a conversation I had with Marina.

Tali: 00:00:06

Thank you so much, Marina, for joining us today.

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I know you have tons of stories to share, so we're gonna jump right into it.

Tali: 00:00:13

Before we jump into your Bitcoin story, please tell us a little bit

Tali: 00:00:17

about yourself and your background.

Marina: 00:00:18

Sure.

Marina: 00:00:19

So I was born in the US, um, half Mexican, half American.

Marina: 00:00:23

I lived in the US, uh, until I was five.

Marina: 00:00:27

And then I grew up in South America, Mexico, Bolivia, Columbia, and

Marina: 00:00:32

came back to the US for college.

Marina: 00:00:34

So I, I'm American, but I grew up in Latin America, if that makes sense.

Marina: 00:00:40

And that's a little bit of my background as far as cultural experience.

Marina: 00:00:45

As far as understanding money, it really is the, that duality of everything

Marina: 00:00:49

works versus nothing works sometimes.

Marina: 00:00:51

And then in college I studied international affairs, and more recently

Marina: 00:00:56

I did my master's in public policy at NYU.

Marina: 00:00:59

So that's where my interest in the world and what's happening came about.

Tali: 00:01:03

Yeah.

Tali: 00:01:04

Thank you for that quick overview.

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So let's jump into your Bitcoin story.

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How did you first hear about it?

Tali: 00:01:10

When was it, and what was your journey from discovery to conviction?

Marina: 00:01:15

So it was back in 2014, I used to run a business association,

Marina: 00:01:21

a very important CEO network that was focused on Latin America.

Marina: 00:01:25

It was called The Group of 50.

Marina: 00:01:27

And we would do yearly conferences in different places around the world.

Marina: 00:01:31

So Singapore; Spain; Washington, D.C.; and that particular year

Marina: 00:01:37

we went to Silicon Valley.

Marina: 00:01:39

In Silicon Valley, you know, we had incredible people like Arianna

Marina: 00:01:43

Huffington, ex-presidents, and, and among those, when we were developing

Marina: 00:01:48

the agenda, we spoke with really, really important entrepreneurs from

Marina: 00:01:53

Latin America who, one was from Argentina, they, they're from Venezuela.

Marina: 00:01:57

They had sold their company to ... and they were now investing

Marina: 00:02:03

in financial startups, if you will.

Marina: 00:02:06

And they had come across Bitcoin because they had problems in

Marina: 00:02:09

their countries sending money.

Marina: 00:02:11

And so they were completely convinced that Bitcoin was the

Marina: 00:02:13

next, the next money for the world.

Marina: 00:02:16

And so they said, you have to do a panel about Bitcoin.

Marina: 00:02:20

And they set up this amazing group of speakers for us.

Marina: 00:02:23

And I mean, given how incredibly successful they are and their conviction

Marina: 00:02:29

and the fact that they had seen the system from both sides, right, from the US and

Marina: 00:02:33

from their countries, I knew that they were onto something, that, that this

Marina: 00:02:38

was clearly important for the world.

Marina: 00:02:41

But also at the same time, you know, I studied public policy,

Marina: 00:02:44

I saw tech, I saw finance.

Marina: 00:02:45

I was like, okay, really cool.

Marina: 00:02:47

I'm gonna pay attention, but perhaps for me, not yet.

Marina: 00:02:53

Right?

Marina: 00:02:53

And this was 2014.

Marina: 00:02:55

It was incredible.

Marina: 00:02:56

I paid attention.

Marina: 00:02:58

But I didn't go above just, you know, setting up that

Marina: 00:03:02

panel, setting up that event.

Marina: 00:03:04

But in 2017, I was working for an international consulting firm that,

Marina: 00:03:10

you know, we're talking about new technologies and what we had to do,

Marina: 00:03:14

and one of the speakers were explaining what was the revolution behind Bitcoin

Marina: 00:03:18

and the blockchain and what that meant, and how it would change how

Marina: 00:03:21

companies work, how the world worked.

Marina: 00:03:24

And in that occasion, we touched upon immutability, transparency, why

Marina: 00:03:31

the ledger was so important, how it had created a completely different

Marina: 00:03:36

change for how money used to work and how it was gonna work in the future.

Marina: 00:03:41

And then because I studied public policy, as I say, I go, wow.

Marina: 00:03:45

Like, that's when my head went boom, like the emoji, right?

Marina: 00:03:49

You know, transparency, immutability, all the things that we talk about from...

Marina: 00:03:52

when we're trying to change things in the world, there it was.

Marina: 00:03:56

And so that's when I said, okay, this is what I wanna do in my life.

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This is where I wanna focus.

Marina: 00:04:01

This is what I want to dedicate my time to.

Marina: 00:04:04

And that's when I started going to conferences and messing up

Marina: 00:04:07

royally, because you go to like Bitcoin this, Bitcoin that.

Marina: 00:04:10

And then there's some really weird sketchy people trying to sell you

Marina: 00:04:14

stuff, instead of really, like, explaining what's behind it, what

Marina: 00:04:18

it means, how it's changing things.

Marina: 00:04:20

But you know, in the end, if you are persistent, you find the right groups,

Marina: 00:04:24

you find the right people who, like, make sense and they're not shilling something.

Marina: 00:04:29

And, you know, that's how I started being, uh, I got hired by a, by

Marina: 00:04:33

a company in Columbia that was using Bitcoin to send money to

Marina: 00:04:36

different places around the world.

Marina: 00:04:38

There was an OTC.

Marina: 00:04:39

And that's how I started that journey.

Marina: 00:04:42

They were having problems explaining to people what was ... value, and obviously

Marina: 00:04:48

Bitcoin at the time had that terrible sense of, like, only criminals use it.

Marina: 00:04:53

And so what we were focusing on obviously was, okay, how does it solve your problem?

Marina: 00:04:58

We save you 20% because you don't have to pay the fees of changing your money from

Marina: 00:05:03

Colombian pesos to, let's say the Euro.

Marina: 00:05:07

Because it usually goes from the, the pesos to the dollar to the Euro.

Marina: 00:05:12

And that takes, you know, three weeks or so.

Marina: 00:05:15

And so they were saving 20%.

Marina: 00:05:17

They were sending the money within two days.

Marina: 00:05:20

And the goal with that team was, like, that's what you should tell your clients.

Marina: 00:05:24

That was, you should explain to them.

Marina: 00:05:26

And once they, you pique their interest, then you can say, okay,

Marina: 00:05:29

we're doing this via Bitcoin.

Marina: 00:05:31

So it really was about storytelling and about explaining how we're

Marina: 00:05:35

solving a really big problem for you and your company.

Marina: 00:05:41

Right?

Marina: 00:05:41

So that's how we started, that's how I started in this space.

Tali: 00:05:44

So can we go back and, for the people who are listening out

Tali: 00:05:47

there who don't know anything about Bitcoin, you mentioned immutability

Tali: 00:05:52

and other aspects of Bitcoin.

Tali: 00:05:54

Would you mind going a little bit more into detail about what those terms

Tali: 00:05:58

mean and why they're so important?

Marina: 00:06:01

So one thing that I liked as far as the explanation of why money is

Marina: 00:06:05

different with Bitcoin, right, was...

Marina: 00:06:07

and or why it became different was because before, let's say

Marina: 00:06:10

you send a picture, right?

Marina: 00:06:12

And the picture is in your computer and also on somebody else's computer.

Marina: 00:06:15

So there is the copy of that picture.

Marina: 00:06:18

And so what the blockchain allowed because it's now in the system and then

Marina: 00:06:24

there's a new ledger each 10 minutes...

Marina: 00:06:26

every 10 minutes, there's a new system that tracks what's

Marina: 00:06:29

happening in different computers...

Marina: 00:06:32

now that, that, that proof that you sent the money or that you sent

Marina: 00:06:36

the Bitcoin is in the ledger, and it is no longer on your computer.

Marina: 00:06:41

It is now part of the ledger, and it's been passed to another person.

Marina: 00:06:45

So the for the first time in, in the history, you were able

Marina: 00:06:49

to send money without keeping a copy of that money, right?

Marina: 00:06:54

And that's what made it completely different from before.

Marina: 00:06:57

That was the innovation, and again, transparency, because it's on the

Marina: 00:07:02

blockchain, it is on the system, and nobody can change it, because obviously

Marina: 00:07:07

every 10 minutes it's updated, and it's in many, many, many computers

Marina: 00:07:11

and many, many, many, many nodes.

Marina: 00:07:13

So if somebody tries to fudge with it, it's very obvious

Marina: 00:07:17

that something's happened.

Marina: 00:07:18

So those were the two, the two innovations that I thought were brilliant and

Marina: 00:07:22

that made Bitcoin such an obvious solution for global money, if you will.

Tali: 00:07:28

Yeah, uh, definitely.

Tali: 00:07:29

And also, you mentioned that when you are sending fiat currency and doing

Tali: 00:07:35

the exchange from the Colombian Peso to the Euro that there is a 20% fee.

Tali: 00:07:43

Can you explain why Bitcoin is better?

Tali: 00:07:45

Why Bitcoin doesn't have that 20% fee?

Marina: 00:07:49

Well, I mean, there's fees, right?

Marina: 00:07:50

And it depends on how much is happening on the blockchain...

Marina: 00:07:53

but it's not even just the fees.

Marina: 00:07:55

Think about, Tali, like how many...

Marina: 00:07:57

I mean, right now in, in my home, I'm, I'm in Mexico right now, and in my

hometown, my address is: 00:08:02

next to the basketball court, next to the block of

hometown, my address is: 00:08:08

this, and in the house of this corner...

hometown, my address is: 00:08:11

and that's your house, like, there's no actual address.

hometown, my address is: 00:08:14

And so if you want to do KYC when you're sending money abroad, which is

hometown, my address is: 00:08:19

typical, a, a lot of people are left out of the system, because they don't

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have a real quote unquote "address".

hometown, my address is: 00:08:27

And, and that limits a lot of what happens.

hometown, my address is: 00:08:30

And so, yes, it's fast...

hometown, my address is: 00:08:32

i, I also think it's faster, right?

hometown, my address is: 00:08:33

I have a...

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a colleague and I, we did a, we did a project for a company, a Bitcoin

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company in El, in, in Argentina.

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And they said, well, do you want Bitcoin or do you want fiat?

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I said Bitcoin.

hometown, my address is: 00:08:45

My colleague said fiat.

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He his took two weeks to get there.

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Mine took five minutes.

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And, you know, three months later, because of where we were in the money...

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in, in the up and down cycles, my, my payments almost doubled.

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And he's like, damn, I should have accepted the Bitcoin.

hometown, my address is: 00:09:05

And obviously that's not what happens all the time.

hometown, my address is: 00:09:08

Bitcoin goes up and down.

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You really do have to have a long-term horizon when deciding to accept

hometown, my address is: 00:09:13

Bitcoin, unless you, you know, if you have that ability, which I did at the

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time, it made complete sense, because I could think long term about it.

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Not everybody has that possibility.

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So I understand that that things can get complicated, but in my case, it

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made total sense, and I was happy...

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because also, if you are a Bitcoiner and you are not accepting Bitcoin,

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it really doesn't make sense.

hometown, my address is: 00:09:37

Right?

hometown, my address is: 00:09:38

You have to walk the talk and, and, and do it yourself as well, right?

Tali: 00:09:42

Yeah, for sure.

Tali: 00:09:43

And that...

Tali: 00:09:45

you were referencing people who don't have physical addresses.

Tali: 00:09:49

There are also people who are just unbanked based on their lack of credit...

Tali: 00:09:54

depending on which system, economic system you're in.

Tali: 00:09:57

And they have a lot of trouble making very basic transactions that

Tali: 00:10:03

we kind of just take for granted.

Tali: 00:10:04

Like, sure, I can, you know, write a, write a check or, yeah.

Tali: 00:10:08

But also you're talking about the timing and how much faster

Tali: 00:10:11

it is because it's, it's...

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you go into a general ledger, and it's over the internet, and there's no third

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party in between, as you mentioned.

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You, you don't, there's no bank, there's no exchange that you're going through.

Tali: 00:10:23

You're going person to person, it's peer to peer.

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Thanks for joining us today and learning with us today.

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If the discussion with our guest resonated with you, and you would

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like to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin, don't miss out on joining the

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Orange Hatter Women's Reading Club.

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The meetup link is in the show notes.

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Also, if there are women in your life whom you think will both enjoy and

Tali: 00:10:45

benefit from learning more about Bitcoin, please share Orange Hatter with them.